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War
can reopen past territorial ambitions
By Patrick Seale, Paris,
Gulf News
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Although war against Iraq may be only two or three weeks away, the
greatest uncertainty still surrounds American and British war aims. What
does the war party want? What dreams and aspirations lurk in the minds of
George Bush and Tony Blair? What are the secret ambitions of the cabal of
right-wing hawks in Washington who are the driving force for war?
Is it just the disarmament of Iraq, as they claim? Is it the physical
elimination of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain and his entire regime? Do
they hope to deny future terrorist groups access to weapons of mass
destruction?
Is the real objective the control of Iraq's vast oil resources, as many
people suspect, so as to hold to ransom the entire industrialised world?
Is the true aim an imperial dream of global hegemony, or have Bush and his
hard-nosed associates suddenly been converted to the merits of spreading
"democracy" to the benighted Arabs?
These questions are worth asking because there is something unexplained
and unreal, even surreal, about the spectacle of the greatest power on
earth assembling an immense army to smash a smallish state which has
already been driven to its knees by a quarter of a century of wars and
cruel sanctions.
Are we truly to believe that poor Iraq, crippled, enfeebled and monitored
like no other nation, poses a deadly threat to mankind? Or is the whole
mad enterprise driven by Israel's well-placed friends in the U.S.
government who imagine that destroying what remains of a major Arab
country will be to Israel's advantage?
Certainly it is Jewish-American extremists, together with prominent
right-wing Israeli officials, who seem most impatient for war and who
speak most insistently of the "historic" chance to
'refashion" the Middle East and "redraw" its political map.
As Israel's Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz put it this week, in an address
in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organ-isations, "We have great interest in shaping the Middle East
the day after" the war.
The former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, who now serves as Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, has hinted at the benefits
Israel hopes to derive.
"The shock waves emerging from post-Saddam Baghdad could have
wide-ranging effects in Tehran, Damascus, and in Ramallah," he said
in a recent speech in Munich. As The New York Times reported from Israel
this week, the idea seems to be that "once Saddam is dispensed with,
the dominoes will start to tumble."
Dangerous dreams
It is worth trying to penetrate the mind of Ariel Sharon who has this past
week formed a far-right government which commands 68 seats in the Knesset.
Today, as in 1982 when he was the architect of Israel's invasion of
Lebanon, he dreams of restructuring the Arab world to Israel's advantage.
His objectives may be summed up as "total victory" over the
Palestinians, the death or exile of Yasser Arafat, and the end of any hope
of viable Palestinian statehood; steady progress towards the goal of a
"Greater Israel" by incorporating most if not all of the West
Bank through accelerated colonies and the forced expulsion or voluntary
emigration of large numbers of Palestinians; the permanent weakening of
Iraq and Syria so as to rule out any possible threat from an Arab
"eastern front"; the overthrow of the Mullahs in Iran, leading
to the possible revival of the old Iranian-Israeli compact and the
destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon; the final goal being Israel's
long-term supremacy over a "tamed" Arab world thanks to its
monopoly of weapons of mass destruction, its strategic alliance with the
United States and its tactical alliance with Turkey.
How much of this is fantasy and how much reality? As in 1982, Sharon's
dream could turn into a nightmare. The past two years have amply
demonstrated that denying Palestinian political rights is a recipe for
continued, and ever more violent, resistance.
The Palestinians' struggle is far from broken. If life is made unbearable
for them it will be unbearable for Israelis also. The daily cold-blooded
murder of Palestinians - about 50 were killed in the last couple of weeks
- will not go unpunished. Many prominent diaspora Jews, and many Israelis
as well, share the view of much of the world that Sharon is a reckless
criminal who is leading Israel to catastrophe.
The European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and even the United States
(perhaps under a saner government than at present) will not easily give up
the vision of an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side and at
peace with Israel.
Once the Iraq crisis is resolved one way or the other, international
attention will once again turn to the Arab-Israeli conflict, when Sharon's
dream of "total victory" seems certain to be punctured.
The grave difficulties on the road to war are reflected in the deep
divisions in the UN Security Council where the two camps, headed
respectively by the United States and France, will be slogging it out over
the next two weeks.
If the outcome is war, with or without UN authorisation, the consequences
are likely to be messy in the extreme, and will be very far from the
"refashioning" of the region anticipated by the hawks.
Instead of a stable and democratic Middle East in harmony with the U.S.
and Israel, one can predict massive loss of life and material destruction
in Iraq; the collapse of central government leading to mob rule and
vicious killings in many parts of the country; a huge flood of desperate
refugees seeking shelter across borders; the drying up of trade,
investment and tourism throughout the Middle East, dealing a harsh blow to
the fragile economies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and also Israel; a ruthless
scramble for Iraq's oil by the world's leading governments and oil
companies; an upsurge of Islamic and nationalist outrage expressed in a
wave of individual attacks on American and British targets, evolving
gradually into more organised guerrilla warfare against their occupying
armies and against the docile government they may hope to put in place.
Turkish, Iranian ambitions
American (and British and Israeli) expectations in Iraq could in fact be
torpedoed by their closest ally, Turkey. Ever since its foundation in the
1920s, the modern Iraqi state has felt threatened on both its western and
eastern flanks by Turkey and Iran. It was only in 1926, and under strong
British pressure, that Turkey gave up its attempt to win back the oil-rich
northern part of Iraq, governed by the Ottoman empire until its
dismemberment in the First World War.
Turkey has always been especially interested in the district of Mosul,
inhabited to this day by Kurds and Turkomans as well as Arabs. A collapse
of the Iraqi state and the ensuing chaos might revive these dormant
Turkish ambitions.
In any event, Turkey is determined to crush the aspirations for
independence of the Iraqi Kurds and is preparing to send tens of thousands
of troops into northern Iraq the moment war breaks out.
If Iraq is defeated, as seems likely, the Turkish army will race for
Kirkuk and its oilfields to prevent them falling into Kurdish hands.
Violent clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish irregulars can be
expected. This local conflict could easily derail American plans for a
northern front against Iraq.
If Turkey takes a bite out of Iraq, Iran could do so as well. It might
seek total control of the Shatt Al Arab waterway which marks the disputed
border, a dispute which triggered the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s and
which for centuries envenomed relations between the Ottoman and Persian
empires.
The Islamic regime in Tehran would no doubt also like to extend its
influence over the Shi'ia holy cities of Najaf, Karbala and Al Kazimain,
all located in Iraq and which act as a magnet for Shia communities
everywhere.
Some reports suggest that military units of Iranian-trained Iraqi exiles -
the so-called Badr Brigades of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq - are preparing to intervene in the north,
centre and south of Iraq.
The invading U.S. armies might have to deal not only with Saddam's forces
but with disgruntled and suspicious Kurds and Shia who fear that the
United States will betray them yet again and install another Sunni Arab
regime in Baghdad.
People in this part of the world have long memories. At various times
between the third and seventh centuries, the Iranian Sassanian dynasty
ruled an empire stretching from the Indus River in the east to the Tigris
and Euphrates valleys in the west until it was attacked and then destroyed
by the Arabs from 637 to 651.
In more recent times, the Iranian Safavid dynasty, under the great Shah
Abbas I defeated the Ottomans and captured Baghdad in 1603. The late Shah
of Iran used to dream of reviving the Sassanian empire and claiming its
capital Ctesiphon as his own.
Rather than "taming" the Arabs, as the U.S. and Israel hope, an
attack on Iraq - seen as illegal, unjustified and unprovoked by much of
the world -might inspire a new and more militant Arab generation to seek
the true independence which the present Arab generation has patently
failed to secure and defend.
The writer is an eminent commentator and the author of several books on
Middle East affairs. The writer can be contacted at: pseale@gulfnews.com